Vietnam: why blogger Mother Mushroom went free

During US Secretary of Defense James Mattis’ two-day visit to Vietnam last
week, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) quietly released the high-profile
dissident blogger known as ‘Mẹ Nấm,’ or Mother Mushroom, on the condition of
her exile to the United States.

While Mattis’ trip and the CPV’s decision to release Mother Mushroom each
indicate deepening US-Vietnam ties in different ways, the episode reveals more
about Hanoi’s insecurities than any political awakening or relaxation of its
repressive security apparatus.

Mother Mushroom was arrested on charges of spreading propaganda against the
state under Article 88 of Vietnam’s Penal Code and gained prominence for
criticising the government’s mismanagement of the Formosa steel plant toxic
spill in Ha Tinh province on her blog in 2016. She had previously written
disparagingly of the government, but found herself in the spotlight of the
CPV’s dragnet when the Formosa controversy attracted weeks of protests and
public outrage.

At first, fish began washing up dead along the coastline of Ha Tinh in
central Vietnam. Then hundreds of people became sick, having eaten fish
contaminated by the wastewater from the steel plant. Local citizens complained
and called attention to the plant’s suspected role in the poisoning. When a
representative from the Taiwanese company that owned the plant acknowledged
that certain chemical compounds in the factory’s wastewater could be
responsible, the government rushed to offer counter-narratives. Government
ministers then refused to release officials findings due to the ongoing
investigation, further angering exasperated citizens. In late June, after
nearly two months of protests across multiple Vietnamese cities, the government
announced that Formosa Plastics, of which the steel plant was a subsidiary, had
agreed to pay a US $500 million fine.

Widening news coverage of the spill – and revelations that the government
had ignored and then covered up the story rather than acknowledge the public
health emergency – likely led the Politburo to feel compelled to make an
example of one of its most prominent critics, thereby sending a signal that it
would not tolerate open condemnation. Authorities arrested Nguyen Ngoc Nhu
Quynh, more commonly known as Mother Mushroom, in October 2016. Quynh was the
leader of the Network of Vietnamese Bloggers, an independent writers union. Her
arrest had a chilling effect on the wider community of dissident bloggers in
the country.

However, rather than achieving social stability by silencing its critics
with the long arm of the law, arresting dissidents often puts them in the
spotlight and grants them international prestige when news and social media
spread word of their detention and often harsh treatment.

In a video conference interview with Reuters, Quynh recounted her three
hunger strikes in prison, the longest lasting 16 days. She also relayed how
authorities separated her from other prisoners, so that she couldn’t
communicate with them or spread her subversive thinking.

The US State Department had lobbied for Quynh’s release and eventually
secured the conditions for her to fly to the United States along with her two
children and 63-year old mother. The timing of her release during Mattis’ visit
was likely meant both to reduce media attention on the story while signalling
to the US that Hanoi was willing to show flexibility to Washington’s human
rights concerns in order to keep the partnership on positive footing.

In recent years, the United States has lifted a ban on lethal weapons sales
to Vietnam and delivered a Hamilton-class cutter to the Vietnamese Coast Guard
in order to boost maritime capacity.

Nevertheless, Quynh’s release may open more questions about Vietnam’s human
rights and governance standards than it resolves. Though Hanoi released Mother
Mushroom, it has detained numerous other activists, bloggers, and lawyers.
According to Amnesty International, the Vietnamese government is currently
holding 97 political prisoners. Last Thursday, another activist who
participated in demonstrations surrounding the Formosa plant’s spill, Le Dinh
Luong, lost his appeal to overturn a 20-year sentence for “carrying out
activities that aim to overthrow the people’s administration.”

Under General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, who has overseen an escalating
purge of political rivals under the guise of a Xi Jinping-esque anti-corruption
campaign, Vietnam is clinging to its intolerance for political dissent. Such a
predilection for repression hardly guarantees a tranquil populace. By focusing
on such a whack-a-mole strategy to suppress citizen dissent, the Communist
Party risks creating a wider backlash and fuelling more unrest than it can
control. Such a negative cycle threatens to undermine social harmony and
distract the leadership from effectively administering to a society on the move
and from distributing the fruits of strong economic growth in order to lay the
conditions for continued growth and global competitiveness.

As I have argued previously, the CPV would do well to consider delivering on
basic services and governance issues (such as reducing petty corruption,
alleviating pollution, and providing clean water) if it wants to lessen public
pressures and enhance its popular support. In the meantime, Mother Mushroom’s
new home in Houston allows her to write freely about her home country.